News

I Understand Lou Dobbs

Does Lou Dobbs feel sheepish about finding himself the troglodyte of American broadcasting?

That is a rhetorical question. To be the troglodyte of American broadcasting—TAB—is to have broken through to the sweetest spot in the media business. You've reached the heights of the form. You're going for immortality in your profession.

Curiously, it looks easy. Any Neanderthal, it seems, could do it. You don't have to be smart, you have to be stupid. Just let all your bias and anger hang out. Don't filter.

Actually, reasonableness and nuance are easy, conflict is hard. The TAB is that person, on radio or television, who, through mind-numbing repetition, is able to articulate and represent a point of bitter conflict in American life. Making this more difficult, the TAB has got to do this before America knows it's a point of bitter conflict. The TAB has got to become one of the main characters of this conflict.

You have low-rent broadcasters across the country trying and failing to rise to this level. This is the grail at Fox News and few reach it. It's now the gold standard at YouTube—your little ditty has got to, outrageously, capture a perfect outrage. Everybody else in broadcasting is an also-ran against the TAB. Only a special sort of clarity—reductio ad absurdum—cuts through the clutter and shines.